Talking to the Fox in my Head
by zsuzsi
Summary: one-shot, sort of out there... no pairings.


Naruto isn't mine. Standard one-shot, totally OOC, but that's sort of the point. Thank you for reading.  
  
Talking to the fox in my head  
  
The Kyuubi... the Kyuubi isn't a person. It's smart, but it doesn't think like a human. It doesn't behave like an animal, exactly, either – at least not like any animal I've ever seen.  
  
Around the time I turned fifteen, the seal that has always been around my navel started fading into my skin. And around that time, the Kyuubi, which had always been something separate and alien inside of me, started to become a part of me instead.  
  
We were starting to merge.  
  
It began with dreams – dreams in which we spoke to each other, because the walls that had separated us were weakening. But it wasn't like talking to Iruka, or Kakashi or Jiraya or Sasuke – it was like one of those conversations you have with yourself, trying to work something out in your own mind.  
  
Sometimes I knew what the Kyuubi was going to say, and sometimes it was totally unexpected. But over time more and more I knew what he was going to say. After a while I couldn't always tell if the words were coming from my mouth or his.  
  
It scared me, a lot. It didn't scare the Kyuubi, because to him it has happened many times before, part of the natural cycle of the youkai who fight and defeat and devour each other. Devour a creature who is made of chakra, and his power becomes your power. His identity becomes yours. It's a kind of growth, but it's also a kind of loss. After a while, it is hard to find the remainder of some essence which is recognizably your own.  
  
I was devouring the Kyuubi. And, because the Kyuubi was very massive, it was also as if I was devouring myself.  
  
I remembered long nights, when the moon was very full. It rang with a pure silver tone, like the pure pitch of a tuning fork. It was very clean and sweet.  
  
On our last long mission, we slept out in the woods, and there was a full moon.  
  
Then I heard that sound again, that sound which I remembered but up until then had heard only in my sleep. It was impossible to imagine sleeping on a night when the moon was singing, so I offered to keep watch the entire night. Kakashi said that that was ridiculous, that I should take the first shift and Sasuke the second and he would manage the third.  
  
The moon has not set at the end of my turn, so I left the watching to Sasuke and went to find a place where the moon was brighter. I felt as though I could follow it forever, always keeping pace so that I traveled around the entire world before it set. But the Kyuubi warned me that this was an illusion. The moon makes you feel energetic, but it's a kind of false energy with no warmth to it. It can turn you into a ghost; keep you moving forever until all your flesh has melted away.  
  
I began to remember things the Kyuubi did. I remember fights in which I had killed beasts or people, other youkai. I remembered my attack on the village of Konoha. When I remembered it, I remembered it as the Kyuubi did, which is to say, with no sadness, no remorse. There was only this cold intense anger, not directed so much at the individuals as at the whole, the village, the blight which was staining the woods. The forest was my forest and the village that developed there was like a cancer spreading: too much order, too much organization. It was always spreading into the woods and I had always fought it back, many times. Even now when I think about it I feel angrier at the villagers then I do towards the fox. I do not think they deserved what happened, but it feels as though there was no other way.  
  
I remember being trapped inside myself. It felt like pacing, endless pacing. It was not an eternity to the Kyuubi, but it felt like a long time because there was nothing to do, only blackness, only occasionally looking through my eyes, which was not very interesting. People are not interesting to the Kyuubi and they have become not so interesting to me as well. I have to really concentrate in order to pay attention to Sakura and to Iruka and I do this because I can remember – I know – that once not too long ago these people were important to me and that I desperately wanted to be liked by them. Now they seem bland, all similar, dull. I can remember wanting to be wanted, but I can replicate the feeling.  
  
I'm thinking about leaving a lot too. People say words like, "Missing-Nin," but that doesn't seem very important. There isn't anyone who could stop me. But, at the same time, there isn't anywhere I really want to go. I've become too much Kyuubi to feel the same way about Konoha and being a ninja as I once did, but I'm still too much Uzumaki Naruto to want to return to the Kyuubi's old life, to living in the forest and singing with the moon, sleeping in the mountains and destroying whatever wants to be destroyed.  
  
I want something to do. I don't want to become Hokage. I want something to be interesting again, something that will make me feel the way I felt when I was only Naruto. Not just the hot anger and cool comfort of the Kyuubi – frustrated, happy, excited, terrified – anything to give me the sense that the world still holds challenges. Someplace. Anything. I do not know if leaving would help me find that. The Kyuubi's knowledge of the world is broad, and he does not think so. Still, some small part of me – that essence, maybe – is telling me to seek it. Some path to becoming human again; some path to become weak - the way I was before. 


End file.
